A hand mirror? I think I had forgotten that. Which is interesting, because I know full well what the symbol means, both in astronomical terms and otherwise.

Anyway, the bit about the mirror is about the only new thing I got out of this well done but very pedestrian video. But part of that may simply be due to the fact that I’m a space exploration geek from way back, and remember following the different probe missions sent to Venus when I was a kid. And the thing is short – less than five minutes – so if you need a refresher course about what we know about Venus, take a look.

OK, as you might guess from my BBTI project, I am a sucker for “homebrew science”. I love people who are willing to spend some time and a little money to sort out the various issues and make use of current tech in order to do their own type of research, just for shits and giggles.

I’ll often re-watch a favorite movie. But seldom will I do so in the span of a couple of days.

However, this weekend I watched something which was so visually compelling, and which had me pondering a number of different issues, that I held onto the NetFlix envelop for an extra day so that I could watch the movie again after I had time to digest the first viewing of it. That movie is Renaissance.

OK, there are a lot of things to like about this movie. But first, let me say a couple of things about its weaknesses. The plot has minor problems. The dialog is uneven in places. Some of the characters are cartoonish.

Yet overall the movie is a success. As noted, most of the visuals are incredibly compelling – which is quite a nice accomplishment in using black & white (and grey tone) animation. When I re-watched the movie last night, I found myself pausing it just to take in some scenes more completely, and a bunch of the movie I watched at half-speed, just so I could appreciate how the artists did what they did.

I was also intrigued to see the vision of the near-term future the movie is based on. It’s set in 2054, just two years later than my novel Communion of Dreams is set. And a lot of the tech they foresee is the same sort of thing I do, at least that’s implied by what shows up on the screen. I found myself wanting to know a *lot* more about that world and how things worked – a good sign, and part of the reason I wanted to think about the movie for a couple of days before watching it again.

Another good thing about Renaissance are the references it makes to other highly regarded science fiction stories, as well as some of the less well-known ‘arthouse’ movies. But it doesn’t beat you over the head with those, or drop them in gratuitously – they serve a purpose, and are part of the overall look and story of the movie.

If you like good science fiction, if you like film noir, if you like animation not intended for children, then track down and watch Renaissance.

What’s big, round, and cost a gazillion dollars – all in order to just smash things? Why, the Large Hadron Collider, of course.

At least that might be the impression you take away from the first part of today’s Sixty Symbols video.

Oh, there’s actually a lot of good science and decent imagery in the video, as well. But it’s an odd mix of being too simplistic and then on the other hand assuming that you understand a fair amount of physics. The explanations are good, if a little basic – but then there are repeated use of images showing the energy traces from collisions (in both two and three dimensions) without much in the way of explanations of what it is you are seeing. Someone who doesn’t understand those might easily come to a conclusion that they’re some kind of explosion (which they are, but not in the sense most people think) and think that the whole thing is dangerous (which it is, but only if the multiple safety features fail). That there have been some problems with this massive machine which resulted in a segment of superconducting magnets breaking loose and dumping a ton of liquid helium into the tunnel doesn’t help matters. These are the sorts of things which may well have contributed to the nonsensical fears in the popular press about the LHC creating a black hole and destroying the Earth.

Anyway, it’s a good video, if you ignore some of these problems. I did learn a couple of things from it (I didn’t realize that they were getting their particles accelerated to within 10 meters-per-second of the speed of light, for example). And I like that they did address how basic scientific research leads to real world applications which more than pay for themselves in the aggregate, though that almost seemed like an afterthought at the end of the video. So if you get a chance, check it out.

But the point is made clearer as the scientist explains that the threat is unlikely – yet, if we had a major impact, the results would be catastrophic.

However, the bulk of the relatively short (6:36) vid is just talking about the asteroid belt, and how it is now thought to be a planetary body which failed to form, due to the gravitational effects of the other planets. One good item was discussion of how even though this is the case, the vastness of space is such that the chances of encountering an asteroid while traversing the belt is very remote.

It would have been nice if they talked about project WISE, which was used to detect some 25,000 new asteroids recently. But I suppose it was important that they talked about the 1970s video game “Asteroids”, instead.

Most of us have heard of neutrinos, a fundamental particle which has almost no mass and is almost impossible to detect, leading to some pretty amazing technological wonders designed to find them. But this video is disappointing – no, the information is good, and you’ll come away from it with a better understanding of the role of the neutrino in particle physics and cosmology. If you don’t fall asleep. Because it is almost entirely talking heads.

The same sound track – the same series of physicists explaining what neutrinos are and how they factor into our understanding of how the universe works – could have been used with an entirely different set of visual images. Maybe just a bunch of static diagrams. Or some of the images of neutrino detectors linked up above. Or animations. Or just about anything.

I’m not complaining about the enthusiasm displayed by the scientists, as they talk about this topic. That’s pretty clear. But that isn’t at all what I would think is most effective in conveying information about the subject to a lay audience.